I was in charge of running all CrossFit classes, ten per day when we first opened, and we had employed a good mate of mine named Patchy to run the outdoor bootcamp. Stewart was in charge of managing and paying all the bills, John the builder was all over the maintenance, while John and Chris worked their networks and sales skills to bring in the members. It was a great team, great opening and we were off and racing in our first six months of business. My stake in the business was as a minority shareholder as I didn’t have a single dollar to put towards its opening, but I knew if we were successful I could make some good money as well.
By the end of our first year the gym was doing really well, so well that Chris and Stewart wanted to expand and offered to buy out the rest of us and go it alone. It was a big proposal and after talking to John about it we decided to accept the offer. It had been an eighteen-month fast-track business degree for me and I had never worked so hard in my life. I ran classes all day seven days per week and cleaned the gym floors on my Sunday afternoon off. I made good money and had managed to save a decent amount as well, but with the high cost of living in Sydney I still had nowhere near enough to climb the mighty Everest.
Shortly after selling Box HQ I stumbled upon a building site that was vacant and sitting in a perfect location for another gym. It was located in a suburb called Drummoyne and sat at the water’s edge of the ‘bay run’, which is a hub for walkers and runners who journey around the 7 kilometres of the bay. I decided to do it all again but this time with me making all of the tough decisions and with Patchy as my partner. I wanted to change the business model and simply open a CrossFit/bootcamp space and not have all of the standard gym equipment. So once again it was six months of planning, building and marketing but before we knew it OLOC Fitness was born and it was the most incredible place to go to work every day.
I would teach classes with a view out over the beautiful bay and I had pictures from all of my adventures next to a massive OLOC logo graffitied on the wall. We had opened really well again – access to all the people walking by our front door made it an easy place to market, and with John’s constant advice it was a total success. I moved into an apartment two minutes’ walk from the gym, which had water views as well. I was trying to live the dream everyone wanted but there was something missing that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
A new app had exploded onto the market that took the awkward bar room conversations out of the equation and changed the dating scene forever. Tinder was something totally new to me, an app that essentially involved swiping through pictures of people in close vicinity and choosing whether you liked or disliked them purely on looks alone. It may seem like a very superficial way to meet someone, which it is, but if we are really honest with ourselves isn’t that what we are all like anyway? I would always need to be attracted physically to someone before I made an approach and tried to start a conversation that often ended in utter humiliation. It would take a few stiff drinks to remedy my embarrassment but ultimately I would be out there trying again. Tinder however took away the humiliation, and while I was working fifteen hours a day, it was the perfect fit for me.
That is how I met Elise. She was a personal trainer in the city not too far from where I lived, and like me didn’t have the time to get among the nightlife to meet people. Her photos were incredible and she must have thought the same about mine because after both swiping yes we exchanged messages and caught up for a coffee. We were inseparable from that moment on: she was beautiful, smart, loved training, worked in the same industry and had a desire for travel. Within three months we would be living together in my apartment and she would be working full-time at my gym, running classes and doing her personal training.
At face value I was living the dream, but the reality was that I was yearning for adventure. Every time I would stare at my photos on the wall or explain to new members what OLOC was all about I would get a little depressed. It had been almost four years since my last mountain, and in that time I had been successful in business, made money, built a great network and met an amazing girl, but I was hungry for something else. The normal life was eating at me a little bit more every day. Everyone around me was talking about buying houses and having kids but I just couldn’t accept that as my reality and slowly I was getting more and more unhappy.
OLOC had been open for a year when I turned to Elise one afternoon and asked her, ‘How would you feel about selling up everything and going travelling?’ She said, ‘That would be awesome, let’s do it!’ At that moment I knew that if Elise was willing to give up the money, the apartment on the water, the business, the nice car and fine dining to go travelling, she was the one for me. I also knew that I was making the right decision because it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders as soon as the decision was made. The business was above break-even but not generating staggering amounts of profit, so I handed over the reins to a friend of mine named Sara, who already owned one gym and was excited to get a second. She would go on to stamp her own mark on Inner West Sydney and the fitness industry.
Elise and I hit the road with our backpacks, travelling all around New Zealand and taking in the incredible mountains of the South Island. It wasn’t long before I suggested that we go to one of my favourite places to train for a while and think about our next move. We landed in Phuket and once again I found myself back on the street that had helped saved my life more than five years earlier. The street had evolved over the years and now there were multiple fitness camps to choose from, plenty of options for accommodation and an endless selection of healthy food. One of the big camps on the street was called Unit 27 Total Conditioning, offering top-shelf fitness classes based around high intensity and functional movement. We loved the place and when the offer came from the manager asking if we would like to be coaches, we accepted immediately.
We were training every day, eating healthy and working twenty hours per week instead of ninety. Going to the beach was a daily occurrence, so was getting massages and drinking coconuts. We lived in a tiny bungalow, did no cooking or cleaning and our laundry was done twice per week for $5. Now we were really living the dream and the best part was, since the cost of living was so cheap compared to Sydney, we could save money for adventures. I had my mind fixed on Everest again but little did I know that a random chain of events and a phone call out of the blue would set me on a course for the greatest adventure of my life.
This adventure would push me to the edge of human endurance, where I would learn and respect the raw humbling power of Mother Nature. I wouldn’t climb one foot in elevation but the heights of my euphoria would be unprecedented. Where I was going would not contain a single grain of dirt, and when I finally smelt the scent of civilisation again I would be a world record holder. What had I gotten myself into?
CHAPTER 14
ROW2RIO
…
I used the term ‘ready for anything’ many times while coaching classes in fitness at Unit 27: if the world economy collapsed tomorrow or if an environmental disaster struck, would you be capable of physically and mentally surviving? I had always prided myself on being ready, and above all else, ready for adventure. On 3 February I took a Skype call from friends of a friend who were planning to row across the Atlantic Ocean from Portugal to Brazil, 6000 kilometres, all under human power. Appendicitis had claimed a crew member two weeks from departure and they were asking if I was able to join their crew. I said yes immediately, without any hesitation. Nothing could really prepare me for a task of such monumental undertaking, but I knew I had a skill set that could give it one hell of a go.
I had never rowed more than five kilometres before, and that was on an indoor rower, so the morning after I had agreed to join the team I jumped on an indoor rower at the gym and plugged away for ninety minutes. My bum was numb and my hands were aching but all in all it felt fairly comfortable so I called it a day. I was very naive thinking I was anywhere near ready for what this trip would throw at me.
Three days
later I had resigned from my job with the blessing of the boss and I was on a plane to London, anxious to join Jake, Mel and Susannah on their Row2Rio 2016 campaign, all in the spirit of adventure and to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support. Leaving Elise behind in Phuket was hard; this was our first time apart since we had met eighteen months earlier and the separation would add a new dimension to the mental battle I’d have to endure. I touched down in London, a city I had not returned to since fleeing the drug scene years before. The weather was cold, damp and grey, just as I had left it, and the memories of my time spent there all came flooding back as the sites, smells and sounds of London overwhelmed me. I caught the Piccadilly line into Central station and caught the Northern line down to Tooting Bec. From there it was a short taxi ride to Jake’s apartment on the other side of the common. It was close to 9 pm as I carried my bags in the freezing wind to his front door and pushed the buzzer. I had never met Jake before and I was about to spend a couple of months at sea with him.
Jake answered the door with a smile and it was obvious he had just been sleeping. ‘Welcome mate, come on in,’ he gestured for me to enter out of the cold and we hugged like long-lost family. He was a solid-set guy but not fat, and at 6-feet tall he carried himself well. He was twenty-nine years old and his British accent came across posh but he was simply well-spoken and wasn’t lazy like we Australians with our slang and rounding of words. He made me feel right at home and we immediately started to chew into the details of the expedition. He brought me up to date with what had been done up until then and what still needed to be done before we left for Lagos, Portugal in a few days time. I was starting to get very excited as we went over the details of the row. Part of me felt like it was all an April Fool’s joke and not really happening but as we discussed food, water and safety support it was quickly becoming reality.
We chatted late into the night until jet lag was pulling my eyelids south and Jake decided to let me sleep and he went to his girlfriend’s place not far away. We were planning on meeting up the next day and getting stuck into the last few jobs that needed doing. It was freezing cold in the apartment but after a hot shower and curling myself up under a huge duvet I was asleep within seconds.
The following few days were busy and stressful for the team who were all trying their best to pull the trip together with limited funds and support. Susannah, who I wouldn’t meet until Portugal, was finishing her PhD as well as organising oars, safety gear, navigation equipment, sponsor graphics for the hull and much more. Mel was going to be towing the boat from the shipyard south of London to Lagos with her dad and needed to leave very soon in order to get down there in time for our scheduled departure. Jake and I were doing the leg work delivering oars, buying supplies and constantly hunting for more sponsors. I was lucky, looking back, to only have had to deal with the stress of a big expedition like that for two weeks and not two years like the rest of the team.
Jake and I drove down to the shipyard to deliver the much-needed oars that were donated to us by Water Rower UK. They were lightweight, top-of-the-range oars built for river rowing. Their durability for crossing the Atlantic was a question mark so we asked for spares as well, which were readily given. After a ninety-minute drive through the English countryside we arrived in the small town of Christchurch, Dorset and the waterside shipyard of Rossiter Yachts, who were doing the last-minute building of the boat. As soon as I saw our boat a smile spread across my face and I was jumping out of my skin with excitement.
It was 8 metres long and not quite 2 metres wide, two small cabs were located at either end for sleeping, but in reality could only hold one person in them at a time, who would be semi-comfortable. When in the water she would only have 30 centimetres of clearance from the deck to the surface of the ocean, making her very vulnerable to splashing waves and rolling in big seas when hit side-on. There were no engines, no propellers and no sails, just the three spaces for rowing seats and the locking lugs to put the oars into. I was like a kid at Christmas poking my head into every little nook and crevice and I couldn’t wait to get out there on the ocean. We loaded the boat with absolutely everything we were going to need to survive at sea for a few months and anything we couldn’t carry on board the plane to Portugal.
Mel arrived with her dad in a big four-wheel drive vehicle loaded with even more supplies, ready to tow the boat to Lagos over the following two days. Mel was quiet and very polite, her shyness concealed a sharp mind and a steadfast British determination. She had done plenty of rowing before and was a member of the local rowing club. Her dad’s name was Roger and he and I got along straight away. He was a farmer and reminded me of the tough, no-bullshit country folk I grew up with back home. We hooked up the boat, making sure everything was firmly secured in place and bid them farewell on their journey. Jake and I drove back to London, mentally checking off our to-do lists, having only one more day to gather any last-minute items before we flew out to join them in Lagos.
…
Less than twenty-four hours later Jake and I were running to catch the train with our bags loaded onto our backs. We had misread our flight departure time and were making a sprint for the train to hopefully get us to the plane in time. All was well, as we checked in with seconds to spare boarding our flight to Portugal. We touched down at the airport and caught a taxi into Lagos, a city of 35,000 people and a port town for Atlantic crossings by trade ships during the age of discovery. It was also a central hub for the European slave trade for almost 400 years and its shoreline has beautiful sand beaches spliced with amazing rock formations, some containing fortified towers used for the city’s defence as early as the sixth century.
Lagos was our departure point for an attempt at a new ocean rowing route to Brazil, 3500 nautical miles away. We checked into a hotel on the harbour and waited for Mel and Roger, who were on schedule to arrive before dark with the boat. Jake and Mel had been to Lagos already as part of the greater mission of Row2Rio. The team’s intention for Row2Rio was a bike ride from London to Lagos, rowing the Atlantic to the east coast of Brazil and finishing with another bike ride to Rio in time for the Olympic ceremony of 2016. They successfully completed their first ride, finishing in Lagos two weeks earlier, and it was at that point I received the invite to join them on the second leg of the journey. It was an ambitious project and I was going to give my absolute all in helping get the team across the Atlantic safely.
Mel and Roger arrived in the late afternoon that day and Susannah arrived the following morning. Susannah was our team leader and nominated captain for the voyage. She had successfully completed a row across the Pacific two years earlier and had been a competitive rower all her life. At 6 feet tall, powerfully built, with long limbs, I could see why she had been so successful in the sport of rowing. She came across as slightly dorky, very intelligent and had great attention to detail, which is exactly what we needed to pull off this mission. Once we were all finally together we sat down and shared a beer to discuss all the remaining preparations to be done and a possible departure window.
We hired Chris Martin, a very accomplished solo ocean rower himself who holds the Pacific Ocean Rowing race annually, to be our full-time weather router. He would send us up to date weather forecasts every twenty-four hours containing wind direction, wind speed, wave height/ direction, ocean current direction/speed and suggested rowing bearings, all to help us maximise our distance covered per day. We had a team Skype call with him to get to know each other and he gave us our departure window for seven days’ time. I wanted to get out there immediately, however he told us there was a weather system due to move through the area in a couple of days and it was best to wait it out and let it pass.
We needed to have a window of good weather for at least three days so that we could get ourselves away from the coastline as far as possible. If we didn’t get far enough away and bad weather hit us we could be pushed back onto the coast and be in big trouble. Once clear of the coast we could ride out bad weather without fear of being p
ushed ashore. The boat was designed to be self-righting, meaning in big seas when it was too dangerous to row we could cram ourselves into the cabins and seal the hatches. The boat could be flipped, rolled and even forced underwater and it would come back to the surface and turn itself upright.
The following seven days flew by in a blur of preparation. We had so many small jobs to finish off in order to be shipshape and ready for departure, it seemed like the list in the captain’s notebook just got longer and longer. We made our first sea trial off the coast of Lagos, testing the water maker, trialling different rowing positions and deciding on where to cook, when to sleep and where to go to the toilet. Our rowing schedule would be two hours rowing and two hours of rest repeated twenty-four hours a day continuously for as long as the crossing took, which could be up to seventy days. I quickly realised during our sea trial that rowing on an indoor rower in a gym is absolutely nothing like rowing in an ocean rowing boat. I had all the fitness but seriously lacked the technical side of rowing, the two girls made me look like an amateur.
Finally the morning arrived for our departure. I was so anxious after two weeks of waiting that I had no idea how the rest of the team handled waiting through two years of preparation. Jake and Mel had family and friends there to see us off and the local sailors turned out as well. At 10.05 am on 16 March 2016 we made our first stroke towards Brazil. Kicking off from the dock and waving to everyone on the shore we navigated our way through the harbour and pointed our tiny boat towards the mouth of the inlet and the open ocean. A flotilla of local boats followed us out and a drone hovered above us, shooting the departure scene for the media at home and abroad. It was only when the last boat had departed back towards the safety of the harbour and the first wave splashed over the side that I stared out at the shimmering horizon and thought to myself, this is it, there is no going back now.
One Life One Chance Page 24